Anusha GS Shetty on burnout, boundaries and being human online

Content creation, especially in digital spaces, has long been celebrated for its agility, reach and creative power. But at the eighth edition of Social Samosa’s SMLive, Anusha GS Shetty urged attendees to look beyond the metrics, and confront the very real emotional toll of keeping up. In a deeply personal session titled The Mental & Emotional Cost of Content, Shetty invited the industry to reckon with a truth many avoid: burnout is not a bug in the system. It is the system.

Creative Head at Yuva and a long-time practitioner of purpose-led storytelling, Shetty spoke not as a distant expert but as someone in the trenches, someone who has navigated fatigue, doubt and emotional numbness, and has slowly learned to rebuild a healthier relationship with work, creativity and self-worth.

Burnout is not a luxury. It’s real.

Shetty began by naming what is often dismissed, especially for younger professionals.

“When I began my career in agency life, I was told I was too young to feel tired,” she shared. “But that exhaustion, the creative block, the constant overwhelm — it all existed. We just didn’t have the words back then.”

Those words now exist, burnout, overwhelm, fatigue, digital fatigue, screen apathy, but naming the feeling doesn’t always resolve it. “At the start of the week, I feel fresh. By the end, after six posts and zero boundaries, I’m drained,” she admitted, echoing a rhythm familiar to many in marketing and social media.

She described the peculiar kind of burnout digital workers face , the inability to switch off even on weekends, the need to chase trends in real time, and the fear of being perceived as unresponsive. “Clients don’t wait. Trends don’t wait. You’re always on.”

Am I burnt out, or just not good enough?

In a moment that visibly resonated with attendees, Shetty described the guilt that often accompanies burnout.

“Everyone else seems to be doing better. So why can’t I?”

This form of self-doubt, she explained, is a byproduct of the hyper-comparative environments we now inhabit. Where once creative work was protected by time and process, it is now compressed, templated and tracked in real time by engagement metrics. As Shetty put it, “We’ve started to judge our worth by how productive or viral we are.”

She emphasised that the emotional toll isn’t just internal, it’s systemic. From justifying sick days to feeling guilty over a five-minute break, Shetty painted a picture of an industry that often penalises rest.

“We weren’t designed to work all the time,” she said. “We were meant to live, to create, to just be.”

Numbness is not normal

Another insight was the creeping apathy digital workers experience over time. “You read about people dying, getting killed, and after a point, you feel numb,” Shetty admitted. In content and media environments, where tragedy and trauma are often covered with urgency and speed, emotional detachment can become a coping mechanism, but it comes at a cost.

She called this one of the biggest signs of burnout: a disconnection not just from the work, but from one’s own sense of empathy and humanness.

The problem isn’t personal. It’s structural.

Shetty was clear that burnout isn’t a reflection of individual failure, it’s a symptom of flawed systems.

“Our systems are designed to drain us. You have to justify your leaves, plan them well in advance, and even then, feel guilty about taking time off.”

She critiqued how undefined KPIs, endless feedback loops and a culture of urgency contribute to mental exhaustion. “We’ve normalised the idea that everything must go viral. And that thinking seeps into everything. Every brief, every brainstorm, every scroll.”

She offered a rallying cry for organisations and managers to be more empathetic and human-led in their approach. “If you’re a young manager, bring the change. Trust your team. Let people take 10 minutes to just be.”

At Yuva, she shared how they've introduced small but meaningful changes: “We have mental health leaves, menstrual leaves, and even a ‘no questions asked’ leave. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.”

You can’t go viral if you’re in survival mode

While the diagnosis was stark, Shetty’s session also offered hopeful, practical strategies for recovery and resilience. These were not lofty frameworks, but grounded, accessible habits:

• Morning pages: A daily brain dump, done by hand, to clear mental clutter and unlock creativity.

• Focus hours: Carving out screen-free blocks of time to just sit, reflect or do nothing at all.

• No-phone meals: Reclaiming short windows of time to truly disconnect and reset.

• Building a “fuel list”: Curating a Notion document filled with books, songs, quotes, videos and content that creatively nourishes and emotionally uplifts.

She urged creators to separate their personal and professional feeds, set app timers, and lean into community — even if that’s just a five-minute check-in with a colleague about something unrelated to work. “You never know,” she said, “someone else’s story might be the tool you need.”

Her final reminder:

“Burnout is a human response to an inhuman pace. But the loop isn’t permanent. Rest. Reflect. Remind yourself: You’ve come a long way — and that counts too.”

Creating with care, not just content

Anusha GS Shetty’s session felt less like a keynote and more like a much-needed intervention. It didn’t offer a roadmap to productivity, it offered a mirror, asking the industry to examine its pace, its priorities, and its people.

In an ecosystem obsessed with more, more posts, more growth, more reach, Shetty made a powerful case for less. Less hustle. Less guilt. Less shame around pausing. Because in the end, as she put it, “You can’t go viral if you’re in survival mode.”

 

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